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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29741634">come back to me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonicneonfishy/pseuds/demonicneonfishy'>demonicneonfishy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>february angst-fest (febuwhump 2021) [27]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Coma, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Needs a Hug, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Post-Canon, not gonna lie it's mostly angst, vaguely</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 21:27:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,532</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29741634</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonicneonfishy/pseuds/demonicneonfishy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a normal mission. Nothing they hadn’t handled a thousand times before. Joe had gone down, and Nicky had finished off their assailants before kneeling beside him and waiting for him to wake. <br/>But he hadn’t.<br/>Nicky had watched the wound close over, watched him take his first breath, but Joe hadn’t opened his eyes. Even after Nile and Andy found them, after they returned to the safehouse, after they’d waited a day, he hadn’t woken up.<br/>As far as Nicky knows, this should not be happening. And yet it is, with no foreseeable end in sight.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>february angst-fest (febuwhump 2021) [27]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141784</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>103</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>come back to me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>day 27 of febuwhump 2021<br/>prompt: (alt) coma</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>This has never happened before. </p><p>Certainly not in Nicky’s lifetime. Not even in Andy’s.</p><p>They are all at a complete loss as to what to do.</p><p>It had been a normal mission. Nothing they hadn’t handled a thousand times before. Joe had gone down, and Nicky had finished off their assailants before kneeling beside him and waiting for him to wake. </p><p>But he hadn’t.</p><p>Nicky had watched the wound close over, watched him take his first breath, but Joe hadn’t opened his eyes. Even after Nile and Andy found them, after they returned to the safehouse, after they’d waited a day, he hadn’t woken up.</p><p>As far as Nicky knows, this should not be happening. And yet it is, with no foreseeable end in sight.</p><hr/><p>They call Copley after it’s been two days and Joe still hasn’t woken up, and Copley calls a doctor that he promises won’t ask too many questions. Andy doesn’t let Nicky in the room while the doctor is there, telling him to take Nile and go get food. He knows it’s an excuse to get him to leave the safehouse, but he goes anyway. </p><p>Nile keeps glancing at him as she drives, as if afraid he’s going to fall to pieces any moment. He doesn’t think he will, but he doesn’t know how to tell anymore.</p><p>Finally, ten minutes after they’ve left, Nile asks. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Nicky tells her. </p><p>“Have you ever seen this happen before?”</p><p>Nicky shakes his head.</p><p>The rest of the drive is silent. They get to the store, and Nicky moves like he’s disconnected from himself, like he has to force himself through every movement. He’s not falling apart, not completely at least, but he’s not okay either.</p><p>When they get back, the doctor is gone, and Nicky takes the bags into the kitchen just to avoid the inevitable conversation, because he wants so badly to know but at the same time he’s terrified of bad news. </p><p>“Nicky,” Andy says, gently but firmly, and he turns around to face her with his heart in his throat. “Are you with me?”</p><p>He nods.</p><p>“Okay.” She leans against the counter. “He’s alive, and completely okay otherwise, but… the doctor doesn’t know why he isn’t waking up. She says we can keep him here, but if anything changes we’ll need to take him to a hospital.”</p><p>“You know we can’t.” They avoid hospitals when they can, their healing too obvious to risk it. </p><p>“I know.” She looks at him so, so gently, like he’s fragile, like he’s cracking under the weight of her gaze. “We need to consider that it might be his time.”</p><p>Nicky flinches so violently that he knocks a box of cereal off the counter. “No! No, he’s still healing, he has to be-”</p><p>“We can check.”</p><p>He nods again, tensely. </p><p>“Decide what you want to do. I’ll go talk to Nile.”</p><hr/><p>Nicky slips inside their bedroom with practiced stealth, used to having to sneak around to avoid waking Joe. Now, he wishes he could.</p><p>Andy had been the one to test Joe’s immortality. Nicky hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it, because <em>what if this is it what if he doesn’t heal what if he never wakes what if what if what if-</em></p><p>Nicky had watched as she made a shallow cut on his forearm, barely breathing, and watched as the wound had closed almost as soon as she made it. So he’s still immortal, but he’s still not waking up.</p><p>Nicky is running out of possibilities, and he doesn’t know what to do.</p><p>He drops into the chair by the bed, the same way he had for the past three days, and watches. It would be easier, he thinks, if Joe didn’t look so normal, peaceful even, as if Nicky could reach out and shake him awake with a whisper and Joe would blink at him and smile sleepily-</p><p>He tries, anyway. Just to be sure. Joe still doesn’t wake.</p><p>But he will. Nicky cannot allow himself to believe otherwise. Joe will be okay, because Nicky’s world cannot go on spinning without him. It will just take time.</p><p>Nicky has all the time in the world.</p><hr/><p>For six months, Nicky is a ghost, drifting through the world as if trapped in a dream. He eats when there is food in front of him, sleeps when he cannot stay awake, barely speaks unless Andy or Nile speak to him. He spends most of his time in Joe’s room. When he cannot bear it anymore, he steps outside and drills with his sword, the familiar movements keeping him grounded in reality. Uncertainty is a heavy weight on his shoulders, but he bears it as best he can. And always, always he hopes, because if he loses hope, he loses everything.</p><p>Nile brings him his guitar. He thinks she’s trying to give him something to do. But he picks it up anyway, starts playing quietly, as if he can get through to Joe that way. Somehow. He has nothing to lose.</p><p>He plays anything he can remember: the first songs Joe had taught him, centuries ago; the songs Andy and Quynh had taught him later; the ones he’d learned for Booker after that. And the melodies he’d made to help himself remember Joe’s poems after that. He plays until his fingers hurt, and when he stops, the last note hangs in the air.</p><p>He looks over at Joe, hoping- but nothing has changed. </p><p>Nicky is lost, adrift without Joe, and he does not know how much longer he can keep hoping.</p><hr/><p>Six more months, and Andy and Nile begin going on missions again. Nicky does not try to stop them, but he stays. Like the spirits in old ghost stories, tied to the house where his heart is. </p><p>He remembers Nile showing them <em>Sleeping Beauty</em>, once. There is no curse, no wall of thorns, no dragon. Nicky almost wishes there was. Then he would know what to do to end this.</p><p>They test Joe’s immortality again. The wound heals again, and Nicky is beginning to wonder if Joe will ever wake. </p><p>He doesn’t want to lose hope. He’s losing it anyway.</p><p>He tries reading aloud, singing, anything to fill the silence in the room, especially when Andy and Nile are away. Sometimes, he imagines a future where Joe never wakes up, where he slips away in his sleep, where this emptiness is the rest of Nicky’s life.</p><p>He cannot think about it for too long.</p><p>Now, he reaches out to take Joe’s hand, moving his thumb to rest over Joe’s pulse. The beat is a reminder that Joe may be asleep, but he is still alive. Nicky holds onto that fact like a lifeline, folds it into his heart and keeps it close. Joe is alive, alive, alive, even if he’s not with Nicky. </p><p>“I miss you,” he whispers into the silence. He aches with it just a little more every day. They’ve been separated before, but always with an end date: Nicky always knows when he will see Joe again. He does not have that now, and he is fracturing, holding himself together with hope he doesn’t know if he really believes in anymore.</p><p>He squeezes Joe’s hand, and hopes that someday in the future Joe will squeeze back.</p><hr/><p>In the end, it happens when Nicky is asleep. </p><p>“Nicky?” Joe whispers, and Nicky startles awake at the sound. This has to be a remnant of his dreams- it can’t be-</p><p>And yet Joe is blinking at him sleepily, and Nicky can’t remember how to breathe.</p><p>“Joe,” he whispers, sliding out of his chair and sinking to his knees beside the bed. He’s barely keeping himself upright under the weight of his relief, his tears already falling. </p><p>Joe smiles, and it’s the most beautiful thing Nicky has ever seen. “Yeah.”</p><p>Nicky can’t seem to keep himself together. He hadn’t cried once, not when Joe had fallen, not when Andy had told him what the doctor had said, not while he kept watch over Joe while he slept. Now, he’s breaking open, all the pain he’d kept inside for a year spilling out in a flood.</p><p>“Hey,” Joe says softly, reaching over to brush his tears away. Nicky takes his hand and presses it to his lips, closing his eyes. </p><p>“You’re awake,” Nicky says, still unable to fully believe it. </p><p>“How long was I asleep?” he asks.</p><p>“A year. Too long.” Nicky leans forward, resting his forehead against the bed. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Joe smiles at him again, gently. “What for?”</p><p>“Everything.”</p><p>“Nicky, look at me.”</p><p>Nicky could never refuse him, especially not now. He didn’t realise how much he missed just the sound of Joe’s voice. </p><p>“I’m here,” Joe says. “With you. I’m here.”</p><p>Nicky just nods, too overwhelmed to speak. </p><p>Later, Andy and Nile arrive home, and Joe is the one to greet them at the door. Later, they eat together, and Joe, Andy and Nile talk and talk and talk, and Nicky can’t keep the smile off his face. Later, they sleep curled together as always, and Nicky feels whole for the first time in a year.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>it's okay everyone nobody has permadied in this chili's tonight</p></blockquote></div></div>
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